


(Storm) King of the Weasels

by Orion_Hunter



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: And the Dangers Thereof, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Incredibly Irreverent Humor, Literal Weasels, Metaphorical Weasels, Multi, Post-Canon, Reality Bending, Tarvek Suffering, Tarvek Wins, yes both
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28275156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orion_Hunter/pseuds/Orion_Hunter
Summary: In which Tarvek’s life is briefly even more surreal than usual.
Relationships: Agatha Heterodyne/Tarvek Sturmvoraus/Gilgamesh "Gil" Wulfenbach
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	(Storm) King of the Weasels

The setup _worked_ , it just needed more safeties; that was the takeaway here.

Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek had been working for months on a method by which Agatha could replicate a second breakthrough in a limited capacity. The idea was to give her a way to practice manipulating reality in small, controlled doses, which would hopefully minimize the chances of her (or anyone else) exploding. In one of those vanishingly rare instances of a spark showing concern for the practicality and consequences of their actions, Agatha had developed a working theory that she should try and build up a tolerance for expanding her mind into higher dimensions. She didn’t need to start with completely rewriting reality, she could just make a few judicious edits to the manuscript. Tarvek and Gil were extremely intrigued by the concept of trying to study and control the second breakthrough, and the Castle was very supportive of anything that could increase the authority and renown of the Heterodyne family without causing its last living member to spontaneously combust.

The mechanism by which they intended to do so was only slightly less complicated than the Castle itself (Three minions had to go on insanity leave after being ordered to help sort the several dozen cubic feet of notes and design sketches, and another one had somehow thrown out his back just by _looking_ at them.), but the underpinning idea was simple. All they had to do was create a way to limit the process of a mortal ascending to demigodhood, and then test it with something relatively low-impact. Three excited sparks trying to stick to fundamentals while warping reality.

What could go wrong.

In a certain sense, the fundamentals were followed. True to form, Gil stuck his foot in his mouth, Agatha did something impossible… and Tarvek got royally screwed over.

In retrospect, the obvious thing to do would have been deciding how to test the abilities granted by the second breakthrough alteration _before_ turning the machine on. This would have been self-evident for most technically-minded people, so naturally it didn’t occur to any of the three sparks who were about to finally test nearly half a year of work. When Agatha started musing on what to do first, Gil unintentionally deployed his talent for saying exactly the wrong thing and made an extremely evocatively phrased joke about Tarvek. Agatha’s resulting giggling fit was interrupted by the loud popping of several fuses, an even louder chain of system failures, and the sort of cloud of inky, foul-smelling smoke which is universally understood to mean “that really, _really_ wasn’t meant to happen.”

Gil was fine. Agatha was fine, albeit extremely disoriented and loopier than the spiral of a distillation coil. Tarvek’s clothes were fine, but they were laying on the floor. And squirming out of them was a tiny, red-furred weasel with an equally tiny pair of pince-nez spectacles and a heavily styled head of hair - and which, despite having entirely different facial dimensions, still managed to retain a very familiar look of annoyed disgust.

For someone who had never emoted as a weasel before, Tarvek did a fairly impressive job of conveying, in order,  
1: That this was absolutely Gil’s fault.  
2: That he was glad Agatha wasn’t hurt.  
3: That he was about as all right as anyone could reasonably claim to be after turning into a weasel, and  
4: That he would really like for that last bit to _not be the case anymore_.  
Agatha (who was going steady with reality at this point, but wasn’t fully engaged quite yet) agreed that they would absolutely change Tarvek back. Eventually. Not tonight; they were going to have to replace or rebuild a lot of components. And she was too drained from the breakthrough to attempt another one for a while. And she was tired. And had a headache. And Tarvek actually made a rather cute weasel and oh god did she say that part out loud.

Everyone else took it surprisingly well, all things considered. Violetta was gracious enough to let Gil keep most of his blood once he explained that the accident was ‘almost certainly probably’ reversible. She and Zeetha only partially asphyxiated themselves laughing when they saw Tarvek, although the look of deadpan disappointment he was giving them as they leaned against each other gasping certainly didn’t make catching their breath any easier. The castle staff and minions on duty would have kept the information to themselves even without Castle Heterodyne gently reminding them. (The castle’s interpretation of ‘gently’ apparently ran along the lines of ‘no permanent non-mental scarring.’) They hadn’t said a word about the Heterodyne’s plans to try the second ascension again, they certainly weren’t going to gossip about some minor setback during the testing phase. Von Zinzer just took an extra dose of anti-anxiety medication, and started quietly rearranging work schedules to have as little involvement with that particular project as possible. When he thought no one was watching, he also slipped one of the anxiety pills to Tarvek.

Tarvek’s fury was no longer boiling over, but it was going to be simmering for a while. Despite this, he mostly deigned to hold off on plotting all the ways he would visit retribution upon Gil for this. Not because it had been unintentional; accident or no, Gil absolutely deserved all of what was coming to him. But the paws made writing essentially impossible, and the sufferings Tarvek intended to visit on him demanded an alphabetized list.

With an index.

The change was understandably rather difficult not to dwell on, but Tarvek eventually started to think that there may have been ways in which being a weasel was _not_ objectively worse. The idea occurred to him mostly because the main way turned out to be mandatory. Agatha, who admittedly still had a few circuit breakers flipped upstairs, had evidently decided that the weasel version of Tarvek was a lot more appropriate for public displays of affection. She had long ago gotten used to the wasp eaters riding around on her, and she spent the better part of the next hour with Tarvek nestled on her shoulder as she tried and subsequently got bored of a dozen minor tasks. Tarvek was not even remotely used to petting, chin rubs, or ear scritches, but despite their surreal nature he found that he very much enjoyed them, and he couldn’t help setting his simmering resentment on the back burner. Agatha found it very sweet when he returned the gestures with affectionate nuzzling against her neck. After he gave her a tiny smooch on the cheek, she completely gave up on trying to pretend to work.

Saying that Gil was extremely annoyed at how much Agatha was doting on Tarvek would be something of an understatement. He had just been working furiously for the past hour to try and repair the breakthrough containment setup, and he was hot, grimy, and exhausted. So he didn’t take it well when he found Agatha completely ignoring a list of component suppliers in favor of Tarvek curled up in her lap along with her favorite wasp eater. (The wasp eater, upon finding Agatha and Tarvek, had snuggled up between them completely uninvited, and probably couldn’t have been removed without a prybar.)

Gil’s sarcastic question about whether the point was to make Tarvek a happier weasel or hasten his return to being a metaphorical one did not go over well. The tense conversation that followed was dangerously close to turning into an argument… which Gil lost as soon as he tried to physically remove Tarvek from Agatha’s shoulder, where he had taken cover when their voices raised.

Gil was taken aback by just how protectively the wasp eater hissed at him. Agatha immediately swept Tarvek up and held him out of reach, and began taking Gil to task over how insensitive he was being towards poor Tarvek, who had had such a rough time of it. He had been physically transformed in an almost unheard-of manner; he must have been so scared and disoriented, and he was probably in shock. Of course she wanted to return Tarvek to normal, but she also wanted to try and minimize how much stress he had to deal with, especially since he had already gone through enough traumatic events to fill all three of their lives on his own. Not to mention that she was feeling more than a little conflicted and guilty herself since this had been her fault, and maybe she needed some comforting as well.  
Gil had to admit that she was not wrong on any of those points. He probably even would have felt sympathetic, if Tarvek had not been sticking out a weaselly tongue at him behind Agatha’s back.

Both Agatha and Gil eventually calmed down enough for her to take his advice that she get some rest before dinner, in the hopes that she would feel less drained after a good nap. Granted, she didn’t agree with the suggestion so much as she was woken up by it after zoning out, which made it difficult to argue against. Tarvek attempted to follow - just to keep an eye on Gil of course. But the Lady Heterodyne’s servants would have none of it, and he was politely but firmly shooed out of Agatha’s chambers.

Now that he was forced to entertain himself, Tarvek had to try something slightly unconventional. It was fairly distressing how few of his regular pastimes were valid now. Opposable thumbs and speech were major quality-of-life factors. He eventually settled on practicing his smoke knight training just to see how much of it still applied, partially because he was curious, and partially because he was so bored that he would have rather gone for a swim in Sturmhalten’s lightning moat than continue wandering aimlessly.

It turned out that a lot of ‘private’ areas in the castle were predicated on the assumption that the person trying to get in could not comfortably fit through a three-inch hole. Castle Heterodyne was probably at least half secret passages, traps, and miscellaneous control mechanisms by volume, and they connected almost everything.

Tarvek accomplished a lot within the next forty minutes. He created a fairly thorough mental map of the nooks, crannies and passages throughout the living quarters. He managed to collect three pieces of small jewelry lost in various vents, including a very nice watch fob that he had resigned hope of ever getting back. And he had amassed a respectable pile of small but important items that Gil would value enough to be useful for some minor blackmail. He had also encountered three dingbot work crews, and been vigorously removed from their work areas by two of them. This had elicited a fair bit of snickering from the Castle, which at least meant it probably wasn’t upset about Tarvek’s exploration… but he did find it a little offensive.

Tarvek abandoned his expeditionary pursuits when dinnertime came, in favor of escorting Agatha down to the dining hall. Agatha was happy to see him, but didn’t seem to be any more awake for her nap. Even with the guidance of her servants she barely managed to go the right direction through the Castle since she was busy talking to him, and Tarvek eventually fell back to walk behind her, so she could focus on not walking off a balcony.

There was some surprise among the waitstaff when Agatha set Tarvek on his place at the table and ordered a meal to be brought to him as normal, but they wrote it off since she _was_ the Heterodyne. As far as her family was concerned, a weasel as a dining companion was so mild an oddity that it barely even registered as charmingly eccentric, and at least Tarvek was much better behaved than any of the wasp eaters. Not to mention, if the Lady could turn someone she was deeply attached to into a weasel by accident, it was safest to assume that she could do so intentionally to any staff who displeased her.

Describing the dinner conversation as slightly awkward would be much like describing the Fifty Families as slightly morally questionable.  
Agatha’s mental facilities still weren’t properly calibrated, and she was now half-asleep to boot. Gil was vacillating between being disturbed by what had happened to Tarvek and envious of how much attention it had gotten him, and trying to pretend that neither was the case. And Violetta and Zeetha had turned picking on Gil into a sort of contest to see who could make the other choke on their wine first. (Zeetha won by insinuating that Gil was jealous of Tarvek because Agatha was never going to use _him_ as a pillow.)  
Tarvek ignored all of this in favor of the juicy four-ounce ribeye steak that was now a quarter of his body weight.

Tarvek hadn’t realized just how hungry he had been. Between enthusiasm for the test of the breakthrough control setup and the existential shock at the results, he had completely skipped lunch. He would have been perfectly satisfied with the meal itself… but then the dessert was served. He found himself eyeing the exquisitely fluffy hazelnut mousse set in front of Agatha, and a series of questions ran through his head.  
Would it be safe for him to eat? (Probably; it was just eggs, cream and nuts.)  
Would Agatha mind if he did? (Doubtful; she was busy trying not to fall asleep on her plate.)  
And, did he deserve this? (…After the day he had been having, that was sort of a stupid question.)  
Satisfied with this line of reasoning, Tarvek opened his mouth as wide as he could and buried his face in the bowl

In retrospect, that was kind of a stupid idea. It reflected incredibly poorly on his life just how unsurprising Tarvek found it that he could lose his dignity over something like not knowing how a weasel cleaned itself. By the time he had finished off the mousse, even Agatha was giggling at the coating of hazelnut cream covering his face and neck. Fortunately for what remained of Tarvek’s ego, the dinner ended abruptly when Agatha fell asleep while trying to clean him with a napkin and ended up face-down on the table. Zeetha and Violetta were still snickering as they half-escorted and half-carried Agatha back to her chambers, and Tarvek took the opportunity to excuse himself. He urgently needed to find a washbasin.

He did eventually find one. In his current state, it wasn’t difficult to convince one of the servants to fill it for him. Tarvek had gotten most of dessert out of his hair and fur before it occurred to him that he also had no idea how a weasel was supposed to dry itself off. He made a commendable effort, but from an outside perspective, it didn’t look so much like he was trying to dry himself as that he was wrestling with the towel. And losing. By the time Tarvek was properly clean, he realized that he had attracted an audience. Apparently, Agatha’s wasp eater had been sharing news of Tarvek with the others, and judging by how often he kept running into wasp eaters now, it was quite the gossip.

The wasp eaters, Tarvek was somewhat shocked to discover, were actually no more of a problem than usual. They certainly weren’t any less enamored with him, on the contrary they might actually have been even friendlier. But they seemed to be a lot more… deferential. Instead of pets vying for companionship and affection, they acted almost like pack animals loyally following the dominant member. There were still occasional attempts to snuggle up to and climb on him (which was even more inconvenient now that some of them outweighed him), but generally whenever one saw Tarvek it would just follow him around. They mostly kept what they probably thought was a respectful distance, but the wasp eaters were inordinately fascinated with whatever he was doing. Not only that, if they thought they _understood_ what he was doing, they tried to help him do it. This did not have a good success rate. Tarvek’s simple attempt to get a late-night drink resulted in nine broken dishes, some minor flooding, and an indefinite ban from the staff kitchens.

Fortunately, the wasp eaters, while not smart enough to understand heavy machinery or sparkwork, were smart enough to stay well away from such things. Since Tarvek did understand sparkwork, he could safely move through one of any number of the castle’s labs whenever he wasn’t in the mood to be followed. Tarvek found that he didn’t mind the entourage as much as he would have thought, but he quickly decided to avoid being seen with it on principle. The sight of Tarvek being trailed by a parade of seven wasp eaters imitating his proud demeanor had caused Violetta to actually fall over with laughter. Tarvek felt that unless the opportunity presented itself for him to try and replicate the effect while Gil was on a steep staircase, or somehow atop the roof, he would rather try and keep his few remaining shreds of dignity.

Eventually, Tarvek retired to the master bedroom for the night. He wasn’t supposed to be in the master bedroom, mind, but he had already snuck into more dangerous rooms that day, and for lesser things than the most comfortable pillows anywhere in the castle. He had about forty seconds to settle in on one before the venerable Lady Heterodyne, still mostly asleep, pulled him into her arms and snuggled him like a very surprised stuffed animal. Tarvek very nearly managed to wriggle himself free before it occurred to him that he actually didn’t really object.

When Agatha awoke the next morning, she was considerably more lucid than she had been the previous afternoon, and upon discovering Tarvek curled up on top of her, more than a little embarrassed. Tarvek, subsequently, discovered that there are very few ways to wake up that are quite as unpleasant as being picked up by the scruff of the neck by an irritated Heterodyne. He also discovered that one of those ways was by remembering that you are, in fact, still a weasel. His brief but adorable panic attack convinced Agatha that she could probably be a little more forgiving due to the extenuating circumstances… and anyway, he _was_ very cute like this. Gil, for his part, had an otherwise pleasant morning absolutely ruined when Agatha came down to breakfast with a half-asleep and very happy Tarvek wrapped around her neck like the collar of a fur coat.

Now that Agatha was in her right mind again (for the given value of ‘right mind’ assigned to a spark in fugue), progress on the rebuilding of the breakthrough control system picked up dramatically. She was only slightly disappointed that her chief minion wasn’t available to personally direct the repairs. Von Zinzer had had the foresight to already be quite busy managing the numerous deliveries of components and materials, and asking any overly nosy suppliers if they really wanted to know what the Heterodyne had planned in a manner that indicated they really, really didn’t.  
Since he was unavailable (and Tarvek couldn’t speak), Violetta acted as an interim supervisor. This consisted primarily of shouting at Gil and Agatha if they became overly enthusiastic about any modifications or upgrades that were not related to fixing Tarvek, and if they were sparking out too much to listen, spritzing them with a spray bottle like disobedient, mad-scientific cats. She also asked Tarvek if he was sure he wanted to change back since it would make it a lot harder to sleep with Agatha again, which earned her a nipped finger and a socket wrench thrown at her head.

Gil had been stewing over his spat with Agatha for the entire night. In the spirit of trying to be a good boyfriend, he decided to work under the assumption that his girlfriend was right and attempted to apologize to Agatha while they were reconstructing the containment setup. It was a very valiant attempt, right up until he said out loud that he thought Agatha knew better than to listen to him. After he flubbed his apology for the previous apology in a similar mixture of self-deprecation and poor phrasing, Agatha decided it would be better to just forgive him than let Gil get stuck in a recursive loop. Their making up was cut short when Tarvek started making strange noises while rolling on his back. Their concern was unnecessary; Tarvek was almost perfectly all right aside from the fact that he had laughed until his sides hurt, and his weasel form had proportionally much longer sides.

Tarvek, unable to use tools or offer any technical insight to those who could, was understandably not expected to help. Even so, he made his own preparations. After a thorough review of the controls and readouts, he determined an ideal location where Gil could stand to manage most of the process himself, and another where Violetta could manage the rest. He similarly picked out a spot for himself, front and center to Agatha’s position, where she would hopefully be able to focus exclusively on him, and localize the effects of the ‘undo’ command she was going to sternly deliver to reality. He also indicated to Gil, via a consistent stream of glares and angry weasel noises, that he had better keep his damned mouth shut this time.

Despite keeping out of the way of Gil and Agatha, Tarvek did end up interfering just a bit with their repairs. A weasel marking lines on the floor with a piece of chalk in its mouth was adorably distracting enough, but it was almost impossible to maintain a proper spark fugue when they could not stop snickering over Tarvek dragging a coat and pants into the room with the unrequested help of several wasp eaters. They finally gave up and helped Tarvek with his prep when he attempted to do the same with a privacy screen.

By noon, the repairs were complete, the systems that failed had all been redesigned and reinforced, and the minions and wasp eaters had been shooed out of the lab. Agatha explained the controls to Violetta until she switched from being confused to being annoyed. As she connected herself to the control setup, she went over her part of the plan with Tarvek. (Don’t explode when the breakthrough machine turned on, think very hard about Tarvek being Tarvek again _and only_ about that, hope for the best, try not to faint while the machine was powered down.) Gil very pointedly kept his mouth shut.

It was a testament to the strength of their sparks and Agatha’s concentration that the plan survived as far as ‘hope for the best’. As intended, Agatha focused very, very hard on the idea of Tarvek reverting to his previous, human form. All of the subsystems that had failed under the strain on the previous try held up beautifully… which mostly served to point out the new weakest links. In spite of Gil’s frantic attempts at damage control, for the second time in as many days the laboratory briefly took on the appearance of an expensive and very poorly coordinated fireworks display.

Violetta, of course, was fine. Agatha was fine, albeit once again on a contact high from her mind touching higher dimensions. Gil was not fine; he had attempted to run to Agatha’s side after shutting down the systems, and immediately fell on his face when he got caught on Violetta’s tripwire. By the time he had gotten up and disentangled his foot, Tarvek was already clothed and helping a woozy Agatha out of the interface. Gil cursed himself as he tried to close the distance between them and the spot he was foolish enough to let Tarvek pick for him. He couldn’t. By the time he made it halfway, Agatha was disconnected from the machine and trying to show as much concern for Tarvek as she could (and what was perhaps an impolite amount of curiosity) while supporting herself on Tarvek’s shoulder.

Tarvek assured her that he was back to normal (he had checked _very_ thoroughly) and feeling perfectly well, but she must have been so exhausted after undergoing the second breakthrough two times in as many days. It was so selfless of her to do that on his behalf, and she really should just take the rest of the afternoon to relax and recuperate, since it had helped so much the previous day. Even when she was fully cognizant, Agatha occasionally had difficulty concentrating when Tarvek spoke. As bubbly and lightheaded as she was right now, she was literally swept off her feet. The fact that Tarvek had to dive to catch her as she swooned and only barely managed to stop her concussing herself on a workbench did nothing to dampen her mood.

The echoing sound of Gil pounding a forehead-shaped dent into the laboratory wall followed them through the halls of the castle, and Tarvek mentally checked off the first of his petty vengeances. Grinning like a weasel in a henhouse, he half-led and half-carried an utterly smitten Agatha toward the nearest drawing room, where she could lie down, and he could finish getting dressed and start penning the rest of the list.

**Author's Note:**

> Of all the things for my first fanfic to be about...
> 
> The fact that this story exists at all is entirely the fault of the Girl Genius Discord server.
> 
> This was inspired when I was doing some sketching and practicing Tarvek’s oh-so-elegant hair. In a fit of silliness based on a half-remembered conversation, rather than draw the rest of Tarvek’s head to go with it, I drew a weasel. The above picture of said sketch was far more popular than I was expecting, and there was a long, hilarious discussion in response to it that ended with someone saying they would love to see a full story written up about it.
> 
> It’s a little more irreverent than usual, but I am... proud, I guess? - to contribute to the tradition of making poor Tarvek suffer for our amusement.
> 
> As a bonus, here is the original story I had behind the picture, prior to the GG fandom taking the idea in a completely different direction, and running like they stole it.
> 
> "Gil, do you want to explain why there is a weasel with red hair and pince-nez running around my castle?"  
> "Well, since people seem to think Tarvek is so handsome, I wanted to see if it's something about him or if the look would work for any other weasels."  
> "I'm going to be insulted by this later, but it does actually look pretty cute."


End file.
